78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



holiday in cambodia
2006-01-13   12:54 p.m.

Quoth the US DOS:

Will you evacuate Americans in the event of a pandemic?

Current medical thinking suggests that a “stay in place” response to a pandemic may be appropriate in certain countries or regions. In this scenario, people would be advised to exercise “social distancing” and avoid any form of public gathering where transmission of the disease could occur. People who are not comfortable with this scenario should consider these factors when making their plans.

What they meaneth: you're on your own, bitches!

That would be under the joint WHO/CDC/DOS FAQ section regarding the ever-changing status of the H1N5 virus. Oh - hey, are those numbers supposed to be little and hang low, by the way, like those elements of the periodic table? Or little and high, like N to the 5th power? I work at a technical university, yes I do. My newest party trick: to say I am a professor of Chemical Engineering at my new place of employ when people seem confused and ask suspiciously: "And what do you teach at there?" I see how long I can make things up until I finally laugh and say "No, I teach literature and gender studies! HA HA!" Some people think it's funny, but some don't. Oh well. Fine, be a stick in the mud.

But back to this Avian Flu thing - yeah. Would you go to Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia? Would you really? Cause I have friends saying "Oh, just go...I would!" who can't even commit to a particular restaurant on any given weekend night or don't want to drive their car "into the city" thinking something will happen to it. Yet - they would go to Cambodia in August. I can't even get them to try Cambodian food. Meh. You certainly aren't fooling me.

After I read this and many other FAQ responses that basically said without saying "I wouldn't, if I were you",
I pictured a scene from 28 Days Later, a flick about a viral epidemic that spreads throughout the UK really fast and makes people zombie-like. Ok, so this won't turn us into zombies, but it could potentially land us in a densely packed airport where small children get trampled and you need a carton of cigs and $300 US - cash - just to get a place on line to get a seriously inflated ticket out (like in the movie).

But wait, how is that different than a normal day in West Africa?

hee hee! It isn't!

My cousin and his wife, who both work for Roche (makers of Tamiflu!) told me that while there is cause for great concern, Steve and I have been places in the last five years which also should have alarmed us. I think my cousin said something like this: "Uh, didn't you tell me they still have Polio wherever the hell it is you just went?" That mis-info aside, he's sort of right: we've exposed ourselves to many a scary, foreign, tropical, or currently-eradicated-in-the-West virus or disease without blinking. So why get scared now?

Well - there's the ambiguity of it all, the confusion, the speculation and the big ol' question mark. Will this virus become communicable, transferable from person to person? If so, Steve and I are totally screwed if we're in SE Asia. But then, if it becomes airborne, it will travel in a matter of days, and we'll all be screwed. Only difference is: you'll be screwed while comfy at home, and Steve and I will be screwed with no way out of SE Asia. And I don't think I'd like to be there if things dissolve into mayhem. It'd be great timing for a Khmer Rouge comeback. I'm getting too old for third world mayhem; I've had enough to last lifetimes.

So...would you go? What would you do? WWJJD? (What Would Joan Jet Do?)

I saw Brokeback Mountain last night, and I cried and cried and cried. I cried like Nicole did when we went to see King Kong. So if you get that, you know I was crying after the movie too.

I cried because it's a really beautiful and tragic love story, but also because it was so easy to relate to. On a personal level, it was easy for me to fit myself into moments of confusion, desperation and longing - who in a long term relationship hasn't felt that? But in some ways, because my initial fling with my current husband was so frowned upon, so touch and go, so indefinable and indeterminate, and because we both hesitated so much at first, I could also relate to the characters' frustration over wanting clarity and security but finding it hard to voice that. Perhaps we can all understand intense surges of passion that overwhelm our "better judgment" and draw us to someone we think won't be good for us. I would hope, at least, everyone's had that kind of experience at least once in their lives.

The obvious difference for we heteros, though, is that the fear becomes about physical survival, eventually; I never feared that my being with Steve would mean that someone might beat me to death. I also never feared that my family would abandon me, that I would never be accepted as "normal", or that I would be so outcast from my community that I'd have to hide in the woods just to be with the man I love. One of the characters from the story/film, Jack, has this really precious naiveté - he asks more than once why he can't just be with the man he loves. Hence the tears. Part empathy, part sympathy, part disgust that we beat and kill people, literally or metaphorically through our laws and judgments, who just want to love and be loved.

Good movie, heavy stuff.

xoxo


Busua Beach, Ghana